


Synchronicity

by nodere



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M, Second person POV, cyberpunk inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 05:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15789504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nodere/pseuds/nodere
Summary: The mysterious disappearance of the Black Paladin gave the Galra Empire an edge in their efforts to regain control over the territories newly freed by the Coalition. Imperial forces crushed the rebellion and secured the Voltron Lions, but not before the death of the emperor. Loss of unifying leadership threw the empire into chaos, fracturing the empire’s rule of might as factions formed behind those vying for leadership. With Voltron out of the way, planets once at the fringes of the Galra domain, became host to these groups, mining for quintessence and mineral wealth, strengthening their armies in preparation for galactic civil war.Back on Earth, the former Paladins continue to survive on instinct and sheer will but have long since abandoned hope of reclaiming the Lions and returning to the fray when new intel surfaces about the missing Black Paladin.





	Synchronicity

### I.

 **synchronicity** /ˌsɪŋkrəˈnɪsɪti/

noun

  1. the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.
  2. another term for synchrony



 

+++

 

You slip between the mineral-formed columns of the cavernous space and into the shadowed alley. Grit and gravel crunch beneath your feet as you make your way along the narrow strip, counting each storefront you pass before finding the one you’re looking for. A quick search with your neuro-link headset confirms the address, and the door swings precariously inward as you barge through. Buckles chink, and leather squeaks. Brittle brown paper taped to the glass muffles the clatter of tarnished bells, their ring as empty as the souls passing their waking days and sleepless nights haunting this hollow earth. So far below the surface, nothing can penetrate their bleak despair, and the noxious air leaves a bitter taste on your tongue.

_Ashes to ashes, we’re all made of star stuff._

You know this truth like you know the dawn, your name, and the faces of every life you've saved and destroyed in the name of a defunct rebellion. The thought dredges up hard memories. At least a dozen years have passed since the Fire of Purification came to the battlefront of Earth led by Sendak with a fleet of armored warships, advanced tactical units, mechanical sentries and remote-controlled drones to subdue the will of human civilization and use their labor to mine the planet of its very life's blood.

_Quintessence._

Shake it off. Think about something else.

Keep your mind occupied so that, at least for a little while, the black hole inside your heart might cease to consume you from the inside out. You don’t have the time to ruminate. 

You just don’t have the time. 

_Go in, make your purchase, and leave._

There are reasons you’ve avoided this place.

Pushing your goggles up onto your forehead, and tugging the scarf away from your face, you look around. The location is different, but this place feels familiar. Scratched and pitted acrylic cases illuminated by incandescent lamps house the apothecary’s mid-grade selection. Lining the shelves are a plethora of choices for any street junkie in jars, tubes, and containers with broken tops. Pills, tablets, papers laced with synthetic hallucinogens, beta blockers, psychotropics, all of it sold direct with a friendly smile. 

Who needs a prescription anyway? 

“We’re closed,” a familiar, clear voice rings out from behind the counter. 

You make a rasping noise when you trying to speak and clear your throat instead. It’s been a while since you’ve heard the sound of your own tongue and you no longer recognize it as your own. You dig deep in your pocket for a crushed pack of cigarettes. “It’s Tuesday,” you finally manage to say to the feet propped up beside the register, and note the silencer on the weapon leaning against the wall behind the counter. 

Sharpshooter can hit any mark blind. 

“That it is.”

Taking the filter between your lips, you search yourself again for a light. “Did the shipment arrive yet?”

He hums, more to himself than you, pretending to be more interested in the pages of soiled dog-eared pulp in his hands.

A quick search through your pockets yields a matchbook. You open it absently, ripping a sulfur-tipped paper strip from the row.

He finally raises his eyes to peer at you from behind his book, tossing it aside with a sigh. 

“I need three cartridges, twenty ccs each.” 

His expression is blank, his face no more than a shell. No glow remains to his crepey, sallow skin and the luster is gone from his baby-fine hair. Hollow eyes sit dully in their sockets as he takes you in. What does he see? What does he choose to remember? Your thick mop of hair hides the tips of your fur-covered ears, but nothing save a heavy foundation can disguise the old scar, a burn that cuts into your face from the hinge of your jaw, ending in a point beneath your right eye. You've learned to cover your sharp, slightly crowded teeth when you talk, and if you keep your hood up, no one notices the arresting depths of your indigo-gray eyes or the pale yellow tint to your sclera. You're not entirely human, and nothing hides that anymore.

He's sick. The truth hits you suddenly when you strike a match. He could go for purification treatments, you have no doubt he can afford them, but that would only prolong his miserable life. Heavy metals still fall from the sky, no one Earth-bound has seen the sun since the Garrison Fleet deployed the last atomic warhead in a vain attempt to push back the Empire. Baptism by fire. The layers of smog that now blanket the land maintain a perpetual state of orange gloam, and it will not be much longer before all of Earth's bounty is annihilated.

You remind yourself not to make assumptions. While you would not want to live like that, it doesn’t mean he feels the same.

Your instinct is to throw down the match and immolate this whole galley post. Force him to come with you. Make your lives count again. 

Instead, the flame dies between your fingertips, and you drop the spent match to the floor, the lingering scent of burnt paper wafting between you.

Not here. Not today. But someday you will do it, you tell yourself, and it's probably true. A rodent skitters across the floor, giving you a wide berth as it disappears beneath the display. Setting the shop on fire would at least take care of the vermin, you think.

_You forgot to light your smoke._

"What's it for?" He stands gaunt but straight-backed and taller than you'll ever be, with his square shoulders and the lean build of a dancer. It occurs to you that despite how it may seem, he hasn't yet been driven down. For a brief moment, you think you see the vast ocean behind the wall of his facade. Breath comes forth from tired lungs, but you know it takes a great deal of effort to show you he's still present. 

One day it will crumble like cinders to ash, carried off by the wind.

You rub the dust from your brows with the back of your gloved hand and tuck the cigarette behind your ear. “Me.”

“What, not who,” he chastises. “A dose that high would knock out a weblum.”

“I’m not a weblum, but if one shows up, we can test it.”

It wouldn’t surprise you if one did show up to consume the remains of this nuclear wasteland. The Galra and the Garrison left nothing unscathed, not even your beloved desert. How dead was dead enough to attract the planet eaters? You really don’t know.

He's thinking about it, too, but he is all out of snappy comebacks. Nor does he toss accusations at you. He knows about your metabolism, why you've never been sick and why you've always recovered quickly from battle, but the poison of this planet slows you down, same as it does everyone else, and not even the miracle of your hybrid blood can keep it forever at bay. Living on the fringes has cemented the wariness in your soul, seeded there when you were very young, and that circumstance watered and tended with a relentlessness that kept you almost always apart.

He grunts, popping something in his mouth from a pill box beside the register and crunching it between shiny white teeth. Those are definitely new. Tooth rot from radiation exposure was not uncommon. Runoff from the fallout above ground seeped through the water table and permeated the recycled air. 

You subconsciously run your tongue over your teeth, deciding to tell him.

“Look, I need it. Kronos has a job for me. Shouldn’t take long to complete, but finding the target is going to be tricky.”

A glimmer sparks in his eyes. With lightning reflexes, his gaze slices through the dense air, checking to make sure you really are alone. “You’re actually going to do it?” he whispers. “Why would you do that, unless-”

“Yeah,” you cut him off. 

“She found him.” He says it like a statement, with a definitive eagerness you haven’t seen since you were classmates back at the Garrison and his ego twice as big. 

“You gonna hook me up or what?” You don’t want to talk about it. Feigning boredom as you wait for a reply, you brush the dust off the suit of carbon nanotubes and neoprene hugging your body, knowing he still looks at you with that conspicuous hint of curiosity, wandering across your shoulders, down your chest, over the curves of your ass and thighs as you move. You’ve always been proud of your athletic prowess, strong, lithe, and resilient. Cracking your shoulders, you tug at your fingerless gloves, and stretch. Making him watch brings you a certain pleasure; it took awhile, but you finally filled out. Blame it on the longevity of your Galra blood. 

It puts the old smirk is back on his face, at least, and that was your goal. With a nostalgic sigh, he drops behind the counter and re-emerges moments later with the vials you had asked for. One by one, he lines them up.

“What’s that going to run me?” you ask. “250? 300 gak?”

“Five.”

“Three-fifty.”

“Four-fifty.”

“Three-seventy-five.”

“Fine,” he caves.

From inside your jacket, you retrieve a sheaf of cash. Licking your thumb, you roll off several bills, and slide the stack across the countertop.

“You still use that scrap, huh?”

“You don’t have to take it, but I guarantee it’s clean. Check the chips.”

"Nah, I trust you. Cryptocurrency is even more unstable. Build a new algorithm, mine a new coin. It changes so fast, the market's a total fraud. This stuff," he holds up the cash, flipping through it, each one guaranteed by the Galra Universal Bank, made of some flexible resin-infused poly, thin, lightweight, and durable enough to last a lifetime. The chip embeds glint brightly, even in the dim light. "This at least is real. Not as good as gold though if you're looking to trade up."

He pulls out a lockbox and squirrels away the stash. The deal is done. 

You unzip your jacket and carefully tuck each measured dose into the bandoleer across your armor. 

“Be careful with those,” he demands, his crooked finger a grim reminder. 

You nod. The thing is, it might not be enough, but you're not about to tell him that. At the same time, you cannot disparage his concern. He has nothing left, let him care for someone, even if it must be you. You turn to go, but a vise-like grip clamps down on your arm and holds you fast.

“Keith.” He speaks your name, a name you haven’t heard in a very long time, laced with concern and longing, and something else riding the fine line of regret. “If they catch you, they will kill you.”

Eyes locked, leaning in, you stand there cheek to cheek. Nose in his hair, you smell the warm vanilla scent of him the same as when you were young. “Yeah,” you say, your voice low and soft and kind. You _know_. “But they have to catch me first.”

You brush him off, stepping back into the spot of wan light from the fixture over the door. This place is so forgotten. You wish it were otherwise, but there is nothing you can do.

You leave.

 

 

### II.

Night comes and with it silence, descending over the mesa with the keen edge of despair. You hardly notice, trying to make yourself a little more comfortable, wedged in a crevasse between the high rocky walls. Even starlight, were it not blocked entirely by the enveloping strata of low, dark clouds, would not reach you here. From an inside pocket of your jacket, you remove a small metal case, compact and covered in a crush of dark velvet, worn down at the corners and coated in the grime of this silty world, like everything you own. You cannot recall what color it originally was, probably crimson or a charcoal. After snapping it open, you assemble the syringe.

You know you should replace the needle, but you only have the one and opt instead for sterilization, striking a match and holding it in the flame until the tip glows orange-hot. Taking out one of the newly purchased vials, you load it up, flicking the end several times with your nail before turning the needle skyward and ejecting the remaining air in one smooth motion.

It is no secret that you’ve done this many times before. 

Sighing, you ruck up your sleeve and upon locating the vein, slide the needle into your arm. You hate this, the implication. All users develop a creeping dependency, and it remains one of the hardest addictions you’ve ever had to break, but you need to get in, go deep, and you can’t do that any other way. 

Three hits shouldn’t hurt, but what if you need more? 

You lay back, the needle still lodged in your pulsing vein, and close your eyes. 

_Why do you do this to yourself?_

Without an answer, you listen through your headset. Most people are always plugged in, but your body won’t take the implants, and you’re not sure if that makes you lucky or not.

As far as you are aware, the technology developed as scientists discovered new ways of reaching into one’s consciousness. Implants at the base of the skull augmented brain activity, connecting the user to higher function in connection with the Plane. By tapping into the vast memory of the universe, the infinite becomes accessible to all. 

You wish you knew why it didn't work for you, but nothing would make you want one now, not really. If consciousness is a code, anyone with access to that code can rewrite you, a thought you find repugnant in its implications. It is how the Galra keep their peace, and you’ve seen it at work through forced compliance. Tech whizzes have found ways to protect themselves from being hacked, though none of their methods beat your old-school solution. Other hybrids like yourself can handle the technology, even ones with healing properties similar to your own. That is why you're convinced it's a flaw with you personally. Regardless, once you’re on the Plane, it doesn't mean you can't be harmed or that if harm comes to you, it won't translate back to reality.

You must be careful.

The warm surge of quintessence helps you visualize the ebb and flow of the crackling static as you fall desperately to restless sleep. Floating along in a dark abyss, your shape takes form. A linear plane forms beneath you. Crisp aqua light fills itself in before the geometry begins to rise up and fall away, giving birth to a harmonious topography. Behind your eyes, a soft hum crescendos to a conversational din. There's a physicality to it, and you can see the glowing auras of people around you, zipping about through the midnight blue, leaving behind vestigial trails of color as they pass. You are no longer alone; you've become a part of something greater, and the wholeness of it fills your spirit with something you've been missing for a very long time.

You know this is only a temporary fix, but it feels like the real thing. 

Kronos herself gave you the Black Paladin’s disk image, a digital specter in his likeness you can use as a starting point. You bring your target into focus, conjuring the details and sculpting him with the data cache and the memory of your hands, the soft curve of his waist, his solid structure, hard muscle and lean, yet thicker than you'll ever be. You fill in the gaps, the color of his eyes, the soft turn to his mouth when he looks at you. His chiseled brows relax, he reaches out. You want to take his hand, yet you hesitate.

He’s perfect, too perfect. You recall every last detail, the pores of his skin, the strange scar across the bridge of his nose, the puckers of healed flesh around the stump of his arm. He looks so real, but this is only your delusion. 

His lips part and he speaks your name, pained, imploring. 

"NO!" No one stops to stare at the outburst, but the chill of eyes upon your back won't leave you alone. 

You whip around.

Nothing is there save the persistent humming and the ribbons of light. 

The world around you falters, shimmering in and out. You lurch forward and back, trying to balance yourself, but the shock of it shatters your resolve. Struggling to recover, you snap upright, breathing hard and wiping the moisture from your eyes as you try to calm down. Clutching at your hest, you feel your heart racing as if it were a thing separate from yourself, rattling the confines of its prison, begging for release.

Soaked through with sweat, you rake a hand through your hair. You’re going to have to try again.

It's one thing to tell yourself not to get your hopes up and another to listen to your own advice. But you made a promise, and you don't break your promises.

_As many times as it takes._

Steeling your wits, you lay back down in the dust of the earth, finer than sand against your skin. Reminding yourself to let go, you try again. 

This time, you take the image and let it work it's magic unassisted. Nanobytes flicker in and out of an artifact projection, but he solidifies before you, blinking. You know he can not see you, that he is not real, but he seems to look right at you, through you and into your soul. He turns and takes off, a streamer of black with a center of bright ultraviolet that stings your eyes. Sighing deeply, because you still ascribe meaning to the gesture, you follow.

The burn takes you far, fast-forwarding through to reach his last recorded visit to this place, but energy wanes quickly in the Plane, and you’ve been so long removed from quintessence, your tolerance is low. Voices echo words you can't quite make out, but you know them all by rote. How many times have you played and replayed this scenario over to yourself, wondering if you recall it correctly?

You haven’t seen him since that final battle with the last true Galra emperor, before the consolidated empire fell to false rule and feuding warlords. As grim as their situation had been, you smile wryly to yourself; yours had been worse. Ill-equipped to follow in his footsteps, you chose instead to leave as soon as a replacement came around.

"Facsimile" might have been a better word, but your phrasing was adequate, and you don't really like to think about the implications of cloning. Something about the idea of a replica believing itself the real thing, walking like him, talking like him, having his mannerisms, and maybe lacking the wisdom of experience but not the memories.

That copy, like this one now possesses no agency, it’s existence a farce but certainly not a lie.

You stand now inside the Black Lion, the head of Voltron, one of the most potent weapons you've ever encountered. Through his eyes, you see yourself inside the Red Lion, the hilt of the fiery sword in her jaws. At this same moment, spears of violent purple arc through the cockpit, crackling through the console, skipping and crashing across the paneled screen, twisting and climbing up the steering, around his feet, legs, hands gripping hard and fast.

He screams as it tightens around his chest, the pain sharp as he sucks in his breath. 

“Shiro!”

You cry out to him, but this is only a recording. He isn’t real. 

_He can’t hear you._

While you are hard pressed to understand the mechanics of it, this moment threw him here, to this place, where it was preserved.

An old companion once explained it as temporal; everything existing at once in perpetuity. Not that her version of physics made any sense to you. It didn’t.

The ghost of him lingers, and while his edges begin to fade, you see the fabric of the space around him spark and tear with the anticipation of a festering boil. He flickers and falters, light flashes again, the bolts of violet still surging through the air, riding on currents, like ropes of quintessence surrounding him and pulling him in. He's there, then not.

The Black Lion roars, a terrible sound that breaks apart with her anguished cry.

“No, no, no, no, no!” 

You reach for him, but your fingers slip through, scrabbling against the cushion of a seat you know isn’t there, trying to hold on to this place that is less than a dream. 

He’s gone. 

But you definitely aren't alone anymore. It comes edging in on you, the eyes peering out, everywhere and nowhere from out of the darkness, watching. It sends icy shivers up your spine, and you shudder. Anyone tracking you here has searched the darkest corners of the empty cosmos to find you.

They’ve waited. 

It’s not a game, you remind yourself, knowing you cannot do this alone; you need help.

 

 

### III.

The two of them stand outside, already waiting as you pull the hoverbike around, drifting in a spray of dust and sand. Swinging your leg out over the back, you hop off, the soles of your heavy boots connecting with the earth. You take off your helmet and drop it on the seat, shaking out your sweat-damp hair as you walk toward the desert outpost.

Mentally, you designate the small one Tek and the larger one Mech in a concerted effort to keep their identities safe. You have a bounty on your head. As does Sharpshooter. As do the pair standing here waiting. You would never compromise your friends. Since your trip down the rabbit hole, you've been much more careful about how you think while wearing the headset. In that other life, quintessence bridged your connection with the other pilots on your team. Learning to isolate those bonds to maintain self remains a practiced skill and one you apply here as well. Yet although it suits your way of life, analog maps of the new landscape just don’t exist, and your old compass hasn't worked since the quintessence harvesting reconfigured the planet's magnetic dipole. You need to be connected, yet you remain inexperienced, and that inexperience exposes you as vulnerable. At least open communication doesn't require user identity and sending messages or placing calls only requires a recipient. 

Anyone can read the news or check the weather. 

_Today’s forecast same as yesterday’s, stifling, dry, and very hot._

Picking her head up from the project floating beside her, the lens of Tek’s bionic eye, like a monocle mounted to the side of her face, jerks into focus with a soft whirr. Her other eye squints at you, and her brow pulls in toward the seam of scar tissue along the matrix bridging the machine to her face. She taps one small robotic finger lightly against her lips, humming, assessing, _judging_. 

“You haven’t changed,” she says, the goes back to tightening a bolt on what you think might be a repurposed drone.

“Is that a good thing?” you ask, half in amusement, half dreading whatever answer she’ll give.

Her shoulders lift with the rise of a shrug, but she shakes her head sadly as if to say, "you'll never learn," and then throws herself into you. She holds you, arms tight around your chest, what's left of her child-like face buried in the front of your jacket, choking back the dry sobs of someone who can no longer but has not yet forgotten how to cry.

“The least you could do is write!” 

You smooth down the tuft of auburn hair protruding from her cap, hugging her back, hoping she feels you the way you feel her. 

Tek was the first of your unit to get sick. Petite and frail, it didn’t surprise you, and yet the thought of it still upsets you, remembering the way her body began to decay, even as she still lived. 

_Radiation sickness._

It transformed her from a completely organic being to one made mostly of metal, and since she had no choice but to either accept it or die, she built in some upgrades along the way. 

You still don’t know what those all are, and it seems rude to ask.

Mech clears his throat, interrupting one reunion so he can replace it with another, his thick arms crossed over his girth, expression stern and gruff until Tek lets go and he grabs you up in a crushing embrace. Eventually, he lets go, one hand still upon your shoulder. "I never thought I'd see you again. Not after-"

Pressing your fingers to his lips, you speak in a hushed tone, “I have the-” considering it a moment, you choose a new moniker, “Champion’s disk image.”

“Did you get it from Kronos?” Tek asked, pulling back warily.

“Yeah-”

"You know where she got that, don't you?"

“What do you mean?” 

Mech licks his lips, his gaze searching from Tek to you, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He runs one large hand through his thick, shaggy hair. “Kronos is the Archivist.”

“What?” you stall, trying to cover your surprise, but you can’t. “How?”

His hand drops from your shoulder. “We don’t know how long, but she’s been here for awhile.”

“She sold out,” you say, attempting to rationalize the news and make sense of it. The eternal flame of the Kral Zera died with the passing of each Galra emperor and in the fervent desire to rebuild the Galra empire, Sendak had brought that tradition to Earth, the flame now located in the floating city of New Daibazaal above the clouds of the decimated Earth. You figure when the Galra have finished harvesting every last drop of quintessence here, they will pack it all up and move on. 

Tek looks up at you, her single amber eye big and round as the lens beside it. “I discovered it by accident. I was just checking on her, like I do-”

“That’s why I don’t write,” you interrupt, accusingly.

“She’ll spy on anybody,” Mech adds.

“Yes, well, okay. That’s fair.” She fidgets, tugging down the sleeves of her grease-stained garments. “I was probably checking a little too closely, but I saw her imprint around the archive. The timestamp was wrong.”

"How do you know that?" You ask not because you're skeptical or that you doubt the truth of what she's saying, but because you want to know why she felt she had to monitor your once-companion so closely before she turned colors.

Tek hesitated, head hung, lips pursed as she stared at the ground scuffing one toe into the dirt over and over again before stomping out the divot she’d dug. She has always kept detailed information on everyone she considers a friend; the behavior is not new, yet her unwillingness to answer implies an embarrassment behind it. Or something she doesn’t want to tell you. 

The role of the Archivist was to maintain the records of Galra history. Yet Kronos was not Galra, so why would she choose to put herself in that position. Unless-

"Hey." Mech stares past you, and you follow his gaze across the golden sky, with its apocalyptic shift of oranges and browns, more vivid at the end of day in this no man's land than they were at the city's edge. Yellow clouds churn on the horizon, the breeze here picking up. Scattered dust sparkles like twinkling stars across the hard-packed earth. When the storm comes, it will reform the landscape; nature's justice in her cruel wake, dealt in a fit of rage against all that destroyed her bounty. "We should go inside."

Tek nods. "Time to batten down." She stuffs all her tools in her apron and gingerly takes her project in her arms, toting it in. Mech closes the shutters, locking them all from the outside. While your friends take care of the house, you sprint back to your bike, and guide it inside the shed around back. You remember this drill well from your childhood, boarding up the house with your Pop when the dust storms rolled in.

When he died in the fire that destroyed your desert home, you took up residence in the shed out behind the wreckage. It was similar to this one, though yours had more amenities: a generator, a camp stove, a solar shower, and a well outside that gave up water the color of your own piss and left a sharp metallic tang on your tongue. Technically, you live there still, and you probably will forever, or at least as long as you live.

Your natural lifespan remains unknown. It could be thousands of years or your body might give out tomorrow. The Black Paladin’s clone had awakened the potential of your Galra genetics, even as you struggled to maintain your humanity beneath its hand. The scar on your face is a permanent reminder, and while your heart has hardened to pain and betrayal, there never was a choice for you. You are both, and neither is right nor wrong.

You squeeze your eyes tightly shut at the memory, remembering the way it struggled to destroy itself and the facility where it had been born. You hurt in ways you can’t fully comprehend. It wasn’t _him_ , but it was the only part of him you had left, and that was why you’d tried to save him.

Shaking it out, you wipe your hair from your face. Closing up the shed should have been a harmless task, but it wasn’t. You combed the farthest reaches of the universe. You sat in the wreckage of battlefields, sifted through the rings of debris newly forming around stars and planets, wastelands of dead mecha and spacecraft like some abandoned galactic trash heap. You thought you had allowed yourself to give up. The same hopelessness hangs here now like motes in the whispery air.

Hurrying to finish, you lock and tie the door shut behind you before making your way back to the house.

"So what‘ll it be?" Mech lifts the lid from the iron cauldron simmering above the stove. Outside, the wind begins to beat against the sheet metal siding, coaxing the structure to life. Sediment patters across the tin roof. The shutters, though secured shut, creak in the window enframements. You glance around, hoping the place will hold. Tek watches with curiosity, and it occurs to you they've been here long enough to know. Steam escapes in curling wraiths as Mech stirs the contents of what will probably be your dinner, canting ever so slightly forward to smell the sweet, rich aroma with a smile on his face you haven't seen since…

Since?

_You’re distracted._

“I need to get inside that disk image. Maybe there’s a clue as to where he went.” The frantic tone of your voice betrays you with its notes of immediacy and distress. Taking a deep breath, you modulate down. “Maybe-”

"Look,” Tek stops you, taking your hand in hers, shiny metal fingers stiff, with heat from the sun you can still feel through your gloves. "He's gone. He's been gone for years."

"He's not gone!” You raise your voice and snatch away your hand, somehow managing to sound as childish as your petulant determination feels.

Conversely, the idea of doing nothing, of possibly missing the one opportunity to find him, to help him, makes you feel very, very old.

You cross your arms over your chest, clenching your jaw, grinding your teeth.

“You need to accept that. You’re still alive. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

You hear her words, but choose not to listen.

The door rattles, a deep pounding against the whistling gusts outside. Mech puts a bowl of something in front of you. There is no table, and you sit around the hearth with your warm food and empty hearts.

Three times in succession, and it sounds like someone pounding against the door. A muffled howl rides the current. Perhaps it would be you if you hadn't destined here for the night.

Tek’s eyes are on you, the bristle of your shoulders and the subconscious twist of the ears you try with no avail to hide. This is the way you are supposed to be, and regretting your heightened senses is absurd. A certain safety lies in instinct. You turn slowly, crouching on your haunches and watch the door.

Again.

One.

Two.

Three.

And you stand, glancing first at Mech, then Tek, waiting for their nods of approval before you approach. You can almost place the scent of the visitor. Throwing the latch, Mech holds ground beside you as you brace one leg behind the door to prevent it from smashing in. You crack it open carefully and reaching out, grab what you can, your claw-like nails digging into layers of traveling garb as you yank Sharpshooter inside.

The two of you tumble to the floor as dirt and debris from the storm swirl through the air, blasting against your skin and burning from the raw friction. Mech slams the door shut, and Tek helps him lock it.

Sitting up, Sharpshooter grins, shaking himself out and pushing a pair of old welding goggles up on his head. “I found you!” He blinks, looking at each of you in turn. Those blue, blue eyes fill with a relief you hadn’t known he needed, and he sighs, slumping back on his elbows in blissful exhaustion.

Almost immediately, the shock drains from Mech's face, and he rushes to his friend. The muffled sound of tears against his shoulder warms your heart. How long has it been since the four of you were together like this?

Longer than you care to admit.

“How?” you ask, deliberately not qualifying the question.

Leaning back against Mech, Sharpshooter runs a thin, shaky hand through his fine hair. “I tracked you. There’s a device on the bottom of one of those vials I sold you.”

Eyes narrowed and brows furrowed, you wait for him to go on.

“My old friend,” he winks at Tek, “makes some great gadgets. You can’t detect radio signals, and I needed to make sure I wasn’t going to lose you again.”

“You’re not working for-”

“Hell no!” Tek spat. “After what she pulled?”

“There’s nothing wrong with selling out if you do it to protect the thing that’s most important to you.” The logic behind why you just defended her evades you, but the way you feel is genuine. You might have done it yourself if the disk image had been given with stipulations and contingencies. 

Tek hmmphs, a loud sound snorting sound that booms through her rebuilt nasal cavity. She looks at her bowl, a layer of storm coating the surface, then tosses the contents into the fire.

“Let’s find ourselves a champion,” she says, in a way that means you know she knows she’s trying to convince herself there’s some value in it yet.

 

 

### IV.

The surge of quintessence helps you open your mind to the possibilities of this realm. It still amazes you, and you watch in awe as the world takes shape, the construct sown from the seeds of the disk image. Tek squeezes your hand, her metal digits cold against your sweaty flesh. A shiver writhes up your spine, digging in like nails climbing each vertebra from the small of your back to the nape of your neck.

She is suddenly gone. 

The journey is easier with familiarity. It hasn’t been long since you left, yet this reformed planescape torments you with an empty cockpit.

_Go on, sit down._

Looking around, you tentatively place your hand on the armrest and lower yourself cautiously to the seat cushion. You hold your breath as the chair re-forms to better accommodate your slender form. As you tilt your head back, the quiet stirs and with a great rushing howl of space and time and everything in between, the surreality sucks you in.

**_Orphan._ **

**_Dropout._ **

**_Good for nothing._ **

**_You’ll never amount to anything._ **

**_Did he really think that someone like him could ever-_ **

**_You fight like a Galra, soldier._ **

Frantically, you search for the source, yet the voices come at you from all directions, a chorus of words. Faster and faster they until they merge, a cacophonous noise that threatens to drown you in pitiless lies.

Grasping at nothing, you try to reach for something else, anything.

**_Patience yields focus._ **

**_You can’t give up on yourself._ **

**_How many time are you going to have to save me before this is all over?_ **

It pounds against your skull. Over and over and over again they cry, and you try to push them out, filling your head with whatever useless thoughts you can to smother it instead.

The desert sun beats down on your shoulders where you stand shirking its blistering rays in the non-existent shade of the old Joshua tree out in front of your shack. You’re holding your acceptance letter to the Galaxy Garrison Academy. Your father’s jacket lays on the ground with other memorabilia of your previous life littering the plot like junk. Your own memories still hurt, but you still can’t quite get rid of the white noise.

Listen. Calm down and listen. Sharpshooter holds your head in his lap, smoothing down your hair. You are his friend, and while you might have forgotten that, he never will. Mech squeezes your hand. Someone’s voice hitches in their throat as they tell you it’s going to be all right.

In your stomach is an ocean, roiling against the storm. The weight of the world is boulders pinning you down, threatening to crush and knocking the wind from your lungs, suffocating pressure from the inside. Roots surge through your eyes, excising the dark as they drill through the nutrient-rich peat of your brain.

Process, you tell yourself. When you die, you turn to dust and start the cycle fresh, the atoms of your being sparking new life.

_We are all a part of each other._

Your consciousness remains when you let yourself go. Pure energy rips you from yourself as you hop the wire and blink from point to point inside his black box.

“SHIRO!”

You scream, but the only reply is the echo of your own cry.

**_And I’ll form the head._ **

Blah-blah-blah.

**_If I don’t make it out of here, I want you-_ **

Stop. “ _MAKE IT STOP!”_

_They found me._

There is no air, no ground is solid beneath your feet, no sky above your head, in fact, you have neither feet nor head. You are bits of information, a copy. A facsimile. The turn of phrase would put a smile on your lips if you had any. You press on. Words and pictures, memories that meld into each other, indiscreet, indeterminate, all of it coming at you headlong.

You run.

“He’s crying,” someone says.

"Keith doesn't cry," another replies.

“Shh! Don’t use that name,” a third voice interrupts. “If someone is listening inside, they’ll hear.”

**_Who are you again?_ **

The question addresses you, catching you off-guard. “Nobody.”

**_Nobody, huh? You look like somebody to me._ **

“Nobody,” you repeat, but the phrase is so familiar. Someone said that to you once.

 _He_ was the first friend you ever made. When you were an infant, your mother abandoned you and your pop. Several years later, Pop died pulling you from the blazing inferno that destroyed your home. You spent your youth unwanted and unloved.

If it weren’t for him, your life probably would have been quite different.

Motes of color streak by as you pass, this ghost version of you navigating the infinite. It’s like the cosmos in a microcosm where everything big and vast is condensed inside itself, nesting like a series of matryoshka dolls, one inside another, in another and-

**_What are you looking for?_ **

The modulated pulse code enters your cache with a deafening crash, like breaking the sound barrier, and you stop dead in your tracks, pulling up abruptly before your headlong course drives you into yet another wall.

_Stop running away._

It’s unclear whether you commanded that yourself or if an outside influence planted it there, but you reach out and grasp it before it flits away again or disappears entirely.

Whoever it is, they have a point; you're no longer sure if this is his conflict or your own.

_He forms the head and you guard the heart._

"Someone." You give in, searching through the gloom, flecks of light salt the distant horizon, if you can call it that. They twist and arc like the northern lights once did, though you'd never seen them. The vision is reminiscent of your childhood sky but fabricated. It's not right. The slurry of the Milky Way is missing, discrete constellations are replaced with random stars.

This isn’t yours.

Grass appears beneath you. This isn’t your grass; you’re a desert child. It belongs to someone else. You let yourself re-form, solidifying into a wholly human body and sit down to take off your shoes. The grass is cool and damp between your toes. The sweet, freshly cut scent of it fills your nostrils, and you pretend for a moment that it’s real.

Beside you, _he_ flickers into being, though the signal is weak and he never quite solidifies. He smiles at you, reaching out until you can no longer see his hand and he leans into you, disappearing into the limits of your field of vision. With a warm sigh, he sits beside you. His hand touches yours.

You close your eyes, listening to the simulated sounds of nighttime at his mother’s seaside home. You’ve been there once, and now that you know where you are, you see it as clearly as if you were still there. Waves crash into the rocky coast, and you remember the fresh, clean scent of the green-blue pacific.

He laces his fingers with yours; you didn’t notice when he took it. Deep within his recorded subconscious, these treasured memories have been preserved, not exactly like pearls, but each with a discrete core, safe and protected. 

**_Are you dreaming?_ **

Familiarity fills you with regret.

**_Keith? It took me a while to find you._ **

It’s him now, and your eyes snap open.

The sense you had the last time, of being observed hits you again full force and you look around for the source. Someone or something else is watching, and you curse your body for all its limitations here.

Suddenly, the man beside you shudders as he begins to fizzle and fray, disintegrating particles sloughing away. Clenching his fists, he holds his arms tightly against his sides, working his jaw as you watch. The gentleness on his face falls to melancholy and twists into something dark and bestial with fangs and red eyes that flash before you for the briefest moment before you destroy it with one swipe of your hand through the vision, the cold violet tinge of your flesh reminding you of what you are.

That you are nothing better.

_You are yourself, no more, no less._

It’s just a vision, and yet something about it is so visceral and real. Even now he makes you feel vulnerable but safe and loved but free.

You fall through the sand as if through an hourglass. You are a drop of light landing and reforming when you hit a solid slab. He lies there, staring at the ceiling as if-

_You're not really here. Like the last place, it is a memory._

He struggles to regulate his breath. In and out. Count to four. One, two, three, in, three, two, one, out.

It isn’t real. None of it.

Two guards come to retrieve him, shackle his hands with red bands of neon, and lead him along as you follow unseen. In a sterile room, they strap him to a gurney, immobilize him, prepare him for some sort of operation.

With morbid fascination and curiosity, you watch. The light bearing down like your blazing sun, but here it is for martyrdom.

Bonesaws and tourniquets, does he even know?

He screams. The pain of it is too much. Blood, thick and intensely purple drips down from the stump of his arm. Thrashing, he tears free of his bonds, splattering blood in an arc across the room. His face contorts until it is no longer him. This thing before you is something else entirely. You don't get a second look before the wave crashes over you unseen particulates that with gale force tear you apart. Your watcher laughs, and the sound confuses you because there is still just you and him before all of it is gone, leaving you buried in the dross of his mind.

 

 

### V.

When you awaken, you hold the desert in your mouth. A crust of grit seals your eyes shut. Dirt and earth spew everywhere as you struggle to get it out and sit up, desperate to fill your lungs with air again. You scratch desperately at your throat, unable to speak, breathe, even your vision is dimming, and you just can't seem to pull yourself out.

Sharpshooter grabs your hands. “Calm down!” he begs.

But you’re panicked, and wrenching one arm away, you lash out at him.

He blocks the blow, lacing his fingers between yours, looking you dead in the eyes and not at the sharp ends of your nails or your grimace of sharp fangs. Warm froth drips down your chin from the corner of your mouth.

Mech pounds your back. “Get it out.”

_Breathe!_

You cough it out, phlegm and sand, so much sand. Sharpshooter holds your hair back as you puke it up into the hearth, over and over again. You didn't realize it would do this to you. From he look if it, no one else did either.

Wet, soaked through with your own sweat, you collapse there on your elbows and knees. You turn your head against the rough floorboards to see the door no longer exists. Shredded wood and twisted steel scatter across the blustery dunes freshly sculpted by the storm. The night is calm and softly gray like faded twilight. For miles off into the distance, you see nothing but the desert.

They watch you.

_You did this._

Tek springs to her feet, metal scraping from the sand in her joints, and jogs out to collect the pieces.

“I’m,” you begin. “I-”

Mech places his hand on your back, rubs between your shoulders. "Shhhh," He tries to help you relax, leaving your headset alone but combing his fingers through your hair and working out a knot. It is thick and coarse and does not tangle easily, but it’s damp and you have been laying on the dirty floor. "Come on. Sit up," Mech urges, but your limbs are like jelly, and you only want to stay there. "You're covered in blood." He helps you sit up and with the corner of his apron, daubs at the nearly black ichor that dribbles slowly down your face like tar.

You feel thick as tar sometimes.

Mech leaves, only to return with a small bowl of water and a washcloth. The water is clean, not at all metallic, and you expect he distilled it from waste and the air. He touches your face with tenderness you haven't experienced in years, and your heart bleeds for him when you think about the people he's lost. Same as it bleeds for Tek, Sharpshooter, and yourself.

You were the ones supposed to save the universe and look at you now, broken and hiding beneath the thumb of the rule you’d tried to overthrow.

_Let him work._

“The skin’s not broken.”

Of course, it isn't. You want to tell him, but words do not come. The memory replays itself until you feel sick again and crawl back to the hearth to dry heave into the embers there.

“How did that happen? He’s been here the whole time.” Sharpshooter’s hands fall to his lap.

Done with you, Mech levels the room with his stern, unwavering gaze.

“Take these off.” Tek tugs at your clothes; you’d almost forgotten she was there.

Piece by piece you let her have it without argument, your jacket and scarves, the bandolier with your last vial of purified quintessence, your belts and pouches, your dagger with its glowing sigil tightly wrapped, your boots, socks, your gloves, the fitted bodysuit, everything. It marks the transience of your life. Your material needs are either with your person or strapped to your bike. Tek lays everything out to dry by the fire. Sharpshooter, closest to you in size, brings his pack over and roots through the contents to find you something to wear.

“You stink worse than a wet dog.” He wrinkles his nose and pulls his shirt up over the bottom half of his face.

“I’m surprised you can smell,” you clap back, delivering a blow to his shoulder that impacts just a little too hard, forgetting for that moment how fragile he is.

Horror-stricken, you cover your mouth, about to apologize, but he bursts into peals of laughter, pointing at your face.

He hasn’t changed that much. Neither have any of you really.

At the end of the day, week, month, year after year, you’re still you. Not the same as you were, but it’s still you.

Taking the bowl Mech left, you wipe yourself down.

From the countertop behind the hearth, A VR comms unit begins to blink, it’s red light flashing in annoyance. Mech lumbers over to it, hitting the light as he pulls open the drawers below and starts rummaging the contents, making himself look busy.

“Hello? Are you there?” a familiar voice asks as the associated face materializes on the screen.

It is the kronomancer, and you want to hide before she sees you languishing on the floor surrounded by-

By whom? Your friends she also betrayed?

Instead, you listen.

“How’re things, Kronos?”

She stares at him, her quintessence-blue eyes darting around the room until they find you. "You don't really want to make small talk, and neither do I, engineer. Let me talk to him."

“You have some nerve!” You announce before Mech can utter a reply. Learning that she’s the Archivist and yet still seeks you out like this only upsets you.

“There you are!” She sounds delighted.

Before you stand, Sharpshooter slams his hand against your chest with a pair of shorts, gaze panning from between your legs to your eyes as if it might be impolite to answer the call with your alien genitalia in full view of the camera. Who's the alien though? Kronos is not a human, neither are you, and you shove the proffered pants back at him before hauling yourself over to the call.

“What do you want?”

“Have you found him?”

You wish you were born with the ability to lie, but if you answer to the negative, she'll know immediately that you've seen him. "I've seen the disk image."

"I can see that." She runs her tongue over her bright white teeth. Her starlight hair still as thick and glossy as you remember from your youth, like the softest wool wound around her head and pinned into place. She has always been royalty, and she still looks the part. The face of a princess is a hard thing to compromise. She has hardly changed, but you've always known her people are hardy.

Like your own. And Mech, the outlier, the future of humanity, with a strength of constitution not to be meddled with.

You push your shaggy fringe back off your forehead, sweat still dripping down your back and chest, and will yourself to some unpreturbed pretense. The saline droplets absorb into your skin. Releasing some of that built up tension lets you uncoil your nerves, energy you know you'll need later. For now, you retract your fangs and exhale the heightened emotion of your vitriolic nature. It softens your edges, clears your eyes, makes your nails look smaller and flat.

It's funny how you can inhabit a body all your life, and yet there are specific ways of it being that make you feel more completely yourself. As if by hiding the traits you dislike most, you can reclaim the defining ones. You prefer a human guise, considering that you’ve spent half your life masquerading as one. On the other hand, your half-Galra blood makes it easier to navigate their rule relatively unmolested.

“Good.” Eyes narrowed, she peers down her nose, slowly assessing you like cattle at auction. Too bad there are no more cattle. 

You curtly nod, looking at your hands, balled into tight fists at your sides, and unfurl them, smiling as naturally as you can with your still too-many, slightly crowded teeth.“I should also congratulate you on your position.”

She stiffened as you go on.

“Truly an honor, you should have told me,” you meet her gaze darkly with your own, “princess.”

It’s a dangerous game, you know, yet you can’t help but feel she’s been jerking you around.

The color drains from her face, and she licks her parched lips. “Listen-”

“No, you listen. If you betray us again, I will destroy you.” Anger consumes you. Gripping the countertop, your nails sink into it until the pads of your fingertips compress the wood below as you lean closer to the screen. Of the four of you in this room, the bounty on your head is the highest, although the Black Paladin would fetch a pretty penny as well.

“Ke-”

"I am not your pawn, none of us are!" You growl and immediately end the call. Crashing to your knees, your head falls into your hands, and you sit there, pressed against the floor. What if she finds Shiro first?

What does she want to do with him?

You're grateful Coran is gone so he cannot see her like this. At the last, he gave his life to give Voltron time to retreat. Knowing as you did so that if you didn't, his sacrifice would have been in vain. No one could have predicted that and you regret it as much as anyone. It got you out. Haggar still took the Lions.

It is not fair, but then life never is. Kronos might be the only member of her race left in the entire universe. She wasn't allowed to mourn her people or her family, expected to carry the burden, to carry everyone's burden, and in some way she still is. She gave you a copy of Shiro's memories after all. No wonder she feels so alone.

“I can’t trace her,” Tek says, furiously typing numbers into a dusty tablet.

Mech crouches down beside you.

“I have to go back in,” you whisper, replaying the last run over in your mind. What you saw was not him, and you know that, but now you think you know how to find him.

The trouble is, he’s not alone in there, and that scares you more than anything.

 

 

### VI.

The quintessence hits you hard this time, and you barely feel your head hit the hard-packed earth, your muscles relaxing into it as she opens her arms.

Every time you journey here, you must rebuild yourself, and this time you fashion your avatar the way you are, not the way you see yourself. You're broader than you were, though still lean and sharp with cheekbones that could cut glass and a gaze that could do the same. Martial arts training got you here; there isn’t much of you left that’s soft, but you’re okay with that. You remember when you started at Shiro’s encouragement.

It helped. Discipline, meditation, working your body to the point of exhaustion to excise the rage and anger burdening you. You know you've mellowed out, but your convictions remain intact, and your drive pushes you through.

After all, you’re here, aren’t you?

Despite yourself, you're still ephemeral, and the concept of weight and bearing has no direct correlation here. It's not an easy or straightforward thing.

All these memories are at your disposal and yet you still don’t know where he went.

Go back. Path it cleanly. Tek taught you once how to scrub your register and rebuild your maps. There’s a single, direct way to go and infinite indirect routes to take. He’s had the luxury of years, if he is even here.

You are running out of time.

And suddenly, you aren’t alone.

A weight descends upon your arm. Turning toward the intruder, you try to pull away, but she holds fast, as strong here as she ever was in person.

She fashions herself here the same way you do, and you note the subtle change. You hadn't quite made out the blush concealing the grayish cast to her skin through the old communication panel on the countertop with layers of age and obsolescence, but the chevron-shaped marks on her cheeks still glow a muted rose. The shine to her silver hair is contrived, and her tired eyes beseech you, dull and lifeless. She is tired, but still, she carries her head high.

“Please give me just a moment. I cannot stay long.”

Grunting, you quirk your mouth up in that insolent way you sometimes do. You cannot shake the feeling that others are with you, their residual imprints lingering.

“Please?” she pleads, sliding her long, slender fingers down your wrist, slowly turning your hand over as she holds it in both of hers.

You don’t have much patience left, but you discipline yourself and slowly nod.

“I don’t know where we went wrong,” she starts. “Something diverged between the Black Paladin’s disappearance and when you destroyed the cloning facility-”

“He didn’t have to _die_. You didn't have to destroy him!" The words hitch in your throat. Your accusation hits home, and she winces.

You replay it for her, a diorama between the two of you. She yanked the black Bayard from the double doors and with a flick of her wrist, it became a blazing sword. Tendrils of hair pulled loose from her bun, framing her face in a shimmering wreath of might as flames of wrath and magic licked the aura of her surrounding quintessence and fused with the weapon. Holding it high, she cut him down.

“That wasn’t Shiro.”

“I’m not so sure,” you reply. While not even identical twins are exactly the same, a part of Shiro had lived within him. “He was being controlled. I learned that at the facility; he brought me there on purpose. He wanted it destroyed, all those other copies of Shiro, of himself. I wanted to save him! We could have saved him!”

“Stop it! This is no parable from some ancient mythology.”

"You're right; it's not. I never looked back.” The anger wells up that you've tried so hard to let go. It is older now, and you've carried it so long repressed, you're almost afraid of what it might do. You've grown enough to contain it, but that is all. "Would you have done that to me? To Lance, or Pidge, or Hunk? He was somebody. Doesn't that matter to you?"

She closes her eyes the exhaustion bearing her down, and you wonder when she ever looked so small. The heavy archivist's robes hang like drapery engulfing her. "I have neither the time nor the energy to argue semantics. The guilt of this burden is mine, not yours or anyone else's."

“You killed a man in cold blood, and,” you pause a moment, trying to work out how to say it, “he was our friend.”

Her mouth opens as if about to say something she doesn't quite know how to phrase. She closes it again.

“I’ve been trying to locate the point in time where all of this diverged. The Galra don’t have to win. They shouldn’t have.”

You consider that, yet you also know this timeline you are stuck in is as valid as any. “The rift?” you ask, almost afraid you know the answer already.

She nods.

The Galra destroyed her ship during the war with all its advanced technology and the teludav to travel hyperspace. It would have taken decades just to gather the parts to build it anew and where would she do that? As the emperor’s sorceress had previously, it was a simple trick to infiltrate herself. That must have been it after all. She decided to join them so she could use their technology.

“And you somehow think the key to this is finding Shiro?”

"Yes." She looks you dead in the eyes, gauging. "It has to be. Something went terribly, terribly wrong. We need to find Shiro, and then we need to go back."

You’ve stepped through the rift before, and you remember well what you saw there, a splintered reality, and what end would it serve? “I don’t think it works like that. You’re just going to create a paradox.”

Her brow furrows, and she looks frantically around, like a deer who, having sensed the hunter at her back, has almost no time to turn tail and run. While she is strong enough to dispense of anyone in her way, she doesn't want to be seen, and the change in attitude is an about-face from the person you knew. Artifacting takes over her form and low fidelity static breaks through before either of you have the chance to say more.

Tek steps through the particles, a perfect replica of her former self, not the hybridized mechanical construct she is now, but the young girl you remember, auburn hair short and curling out around her pointed elfin face, oversized spectacles sitting primly on the end of her nose. She plucks something from nothing, a silvery thread of digital data, like a strand of spider’s silk, and holds it up to her face. "Looks like she left us some clues."

“That was you?”

“Of course. I don’t let my friends risk themselves like this without backup.”

The poignancy of her words strikes you soundly. It’s good to have her on your team.

You glance back over your shoulder. Nothing emerges from the darkness.

She lifts her hand and starts typing before you see the panel form beneath her palm. Your mind fills in the gaps, and you find yourself inside a small room, much like a closet, with computers and consoles built into a wall. The drab gray and orange tones jog a memory. You are somewhere in the past.

 _His_ past.

The Galaxy Garrison's stated mission, to train talented young people to become the next generation of astro-explorers, was something of a cover. That much was evident to you from the start, but you held no trust in systems and institutions. To call the Garrison a military institution hit the target right in the bullseye. They already knew about alien life when Shiro chose to fly the mission to Pluto. The technology required to carry human beings that far away from their little blue planet and the warming rays of the radiant sun had been acquired from the same race that now ruled Earth.

_And here you are stuck between those two worlds._

The door bursts open and two figures step inside, Commander Iverson and Admiral Sanda. You recognize them at once. Shiro follows behind and shuts the door behind them.

“Why did you bring us here?” you whisper.

Tek narrows her eyes. “Because a disk image is only a copy and you’ve been looking at his most recent memories. The earliest memories on it begin here, well not here in this command room, but at the Galaxy Garrison in reference to the Kerberos project. We’re not going to be able to find him unless we search from the beginning. You really don’t know much about how this works, do you?”

With a sigh, you close your eyes and shake your head. You still feel you aren’t the only ones here before you’re pulled in a new direction. A flash of light deposits you on a hoverbike. Tek sits behind you, her hands locked around your slim waist.

Riding beside you, Shiro smiles, his brilliance eclipses the sun, and his wind-blown hair glistening like fire with its golden light. Punching the gas, he blasts on ahead, leaving you in the dust.

Another moment, and you're standing together outside the shack you still call home. Side-eyeing your hand upon his shoulder, you squeeze just a little to let him know it's okay.

Again and this time you’re on some desolate desert planet, the white carapace of his armor cracked and broken through, a wound in his side as large as your hand. He’s sweating in his helmet, white puffs of breath making clouds against the inside of his visor.

“If I don’t make it-”

You crash headlong into the next memory, at the helm of the Red Lion, where he stands beside you, his hand on your shoulder now.

“If anything ever happens to me-”

“Stop talking like that!” You’re desperate, and it comes through in your words. “Nothing is going to happen to you!”

But you’re selling yourself short.

He didn’t make it, after all.

_One more time._

“Keith!” Tek yells, “Don’t forget!If you die in here, you’re dead!”

With that, she lets go, and it should just be you, but it is not, and your watcher is back eyeing you intently. It’s presence exposes you for what you are.

Everything is dark again, endless and empty. Only when you bring your hand to your face do you know you still have form. Your soft fingertips feel their way around the smooth conch of your ear when you run your hand through your hair. Touching your face, your cheeks are smooth. The body you have here is young and supple, not as strong, but resilient and agile.

There is something you must understand.

_This is the way I remember you, know you._

“Shiro?” snapping to attention, you look around, shaking off his illusion for your own, for the self you are now.

**_You’ve grown up, I see._ **

This time it’s the other. The voice is so similar, nearly the same, but Shiro never took that tone of mocking amusement with you.

You close your stance, unsure of whether to fight or flee.

**_I can hear your every thought._ **

The voice laughs at you.

Frantic to locate the source, you twist around, but how do you find something in the middle of nothing?

Squaring your shoulders, you stand as tall as you can, chin up, waiting, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from, but this place doesn’t work like that. It is everywhere and nowhere. Tek said you would have to be careful. The delay caused by your connection also slows down your data, making your projected image unstable and prone to exploitation. It’s in the sharp twinge you’ve been unable to shake, the shiver up your spine, the way your hackles rise although you have no inkling why.

The trail of a thought leaves you with only a word: quintessence.

Regardless, whoever they are, _what_ ever they are, they are here, and they are watching you.

**_Why did you come here?_ **

Flat with no echo and so low you know it’s meant only for you.

“I am looking for someone.” You think it before you speak it, not meaning to reveal your purpose, but it frantically enshrouds you. It’s hard to see through.

Instinctively, you refuse to move. Like the chill of the out-bound tide, it laps at your ankles, wrapping around your calves before you take a step back and it buries your feet. Movement will give you away. Movement means you're backing down.

From out of the dense blackness, you see them now, two glints of violet glowing softly as they approach.

The creature stalks a wide circle around you as you watch, eyes narrowed. They know you so very well.

A low rumble emanates from within, hot, stagnant air rips and roils the nearer they come. Dim light glows like bioluminescence beneath their feet with every forward step they take, light that fades again when they pass. You catch brief glimpses of their hulking form through the sputtering lights, like a dire wolf but larger still with long, dark hair covering its shape, with powerful legs and long claws.

**_Keith._ **

Perfectly still, you watch as it shifts, their new profile that of a man.

 

 

### VII.

**_This man?_ **

The creature wearing Shiro's body steps forward, then glitches out again. The being stands before you unknown, but its sentience is undeniable. A knowing Cheshire grin breaks across their face, lips peeled back revealing rows of sharp fangs. Their jaw unhinges, and a guttural roar escapes their lungs. Wide eyes glitter violet as they lower their head leaving spectral color behind with every slight movement. Nostrils flare with each unnecessary breath, and they charge with the bull-fury of a tempered rage. Kinetic force rips forth from powerful shoulders.

It hits you they're not from here either, but you have no time to further consider this thought.

Breaching the continuity of the fabric of space, you reach in and pull out a dagger. It appears no more than a pale ghost of the original you carry, but you meet his blade. White gold sparks fly from the honed edge that scatter like fireflies rising up through the dark _._

Left, right, feint. You meet each devastating blow, even as they press on.

_Do not let them drive you!_

“Shiro!” you scream.

**_He’s not here. It’s nothing personal, but if you probably should have stayed where you were._ **

You dodge the arcing blade, and it carves a rift through the standing plane. Before you can pick yourself up again, you've fallen through, sliding across to a new abyss on the soundless souls of your boots even as they jump through after you.

Another swipe and you roll over onto your stomach, pushing up against an invisible force with your toes. Thick dark liquid runs down your arm. It stings when you move it, but it still works.

**_Tsk, tsk. I need to bring you back alive, paladin, but I won’t hesitate to hurt you._ **

_“Remember,”_ you hear Tek inside your head. _“If you die, you’re dead.”_

“What are you talking about?”

**_We’re going to revive the Lions, but we need the paladins to do that._ **

Everything about this being has the mark of alchemical magic, much like that of the princess but different.

**_No, not like hers at all._ **

You feel the brush of wind across your back, as you duck the swinging sword. Spinning around with a kick, you meet the creature's hand and the flat of the hilt, knocking it briefly off balance. You kick again, this time striking the chest and you take the blade as it staggers back. Hulking, growing to a size much larger than Shiro or yourself, covered in hair and teeth with eyes forming and snapping open, bloodshot from the place its head just was. They snort, their breath a rank fog, and acid froth drips from their mouth like some old-fashioned nightmare.

You hear Sharpshooter’s warning, _“If they catch you, they will kill you,”_ and you know that in a simple chase, you’ll never have a chance. 

You need to come up with another way to best this being.

_Them._

Shifting and changing its form in your hand, the Black Bayard returns to dormancy. You heft it in your palm, its newest master, and it conforms to your grip. With a twist of your wrist, the blade forms again, this time into a saber and not the thrusting weapon your Bayard had previously been. Your dagger conforms to match, and you shove the creature backward until you have them on the ground, the tips of both blades beneath their chin.

**_So this is what we’ve come to. Vrepit Sa!_ **

Their lips remain parted in that sinister grin as if permanently stuck. You edge the blades in farther, one brow quirked as you study them.

Prone. Waiting.

They can wait all day.

You can’t.

You know you can’t combat them here, in a place where they dictate what you see and how you are.

You need to take them somewhere new, somewhere fresh, somewhere _yours_.

_Run!_

Through a hall of polished metal, the light gleams in bright white reflection from the artificial overhead lamps. The hard pound of boots crash toward you from behind, but you're too fast. One hand at the edge of the wall, you push off for balance as you race around the corner, right into Commander Iverson.

“This is it, Kogane, you’ve used up all your change, and no one is left to bail you out.”

Pulling your fist back, fingers loose, you let it go with a roar, feeling the crunch of bone and meat beneath your hand.

The scene fades. They still choose, not you. 

Doubling down, you glance back over your shoulder. The creature follows behind at a lope. They could easily overtake you if they wanted to. The path you build slopes downward, steps forming from a great gaping maw and a suit of armor assembling itself around your projected form. This time, you're exiting the red lion. The dagger dissipates and you grip the Bayard tighter, slicing the air as you forge on, taking the steps two at a time. From the vambrace on your other arm, a blue crystal shield deploys.

You meet the Galra emperor head-on, sparks flying from your very real weapons, fighting against the lack of gravity.

Fast forward.

“You fight like a Galra, soldier.”

Screaming, you run toward the emperor, as a hole opens up before you and instead, you dive in head first, the hard white carapace of your paladin armor sloughing off in sheets, leaving you in a body suit. Crisp violet light from your core illuminates the rabbit hole, and you brace for impact. You land on your stomach, knees and elbows splay out beneath you.

Shiro stands over you. The hallucination is an image created from your own mind, but you don’t know if they realize this or not. You still clutch the Bayard desperately; they cannot take it from you.

“You’re only thinking of yourself, as usual.”

The pain of those words still cuts, the wound as fresh and open as ever, knowing full well this insecurity comes only from within yourself. You have better things to do than wallow in the memory.

Rolling over onto your back, the creature falls toward you.

**_Keith-_ **

Closing your eyes, you know you have to end it, and when you open them again, you’re sitting in the cockpit of the Black Lion.

_Breathe._

Your free hand grips the steering, and you close your eyes. You'll probably lose the quintessence boost soon, but you still have to try. Concentrate.

_You can do this._

_I will never give up on you!_

“I know you’re here.” You speak the truth as a large hand clamps down on your shoulder, talons digging into your flesh until spots of blood bloom beneath them.

They expect you to move, but you don’t.

It’s not so much you can’t, you just don’t want to.

You shove the Black bayard into the glowing slot on the console and turn it, opening yourself up to the monster before you, engulfed by its seething life force as it tears through your form.

 

 

### VIII.

**_Do you fear me?_ **

You are everything and nothing, particulates of unformed mass, specks of data scrubbed from memory like a continuity gap where no one has remembered to run a defrag. 

By the sheer force of your will, you pull yourself together, drawing on the quintessence within and without to solidify your form. The last injection will wear off soon, and you have to give it your all before it's gone completely.

When you only have one shot, you have to make it count.

_Focus!_

Energy courses through you, as you coalesce within the beast, shattering their grip on this surreality, breaking down the asynchronous code from the inside. Much like your own, it begins to rebuild almost immediately, but what comes into focus is something else entirely.

“Shiro?” you murmur, unable to take your eyes away.

He looks around the familiar place, fingertips grazing the console, the steering, the edge of the chair, your arm. “How did you find me?

“Are you talking to me?”

Still taller than you and resplendent in his Black Paladin armor, he stares at you long and hard, brow furrowed with a hint of suspicion before tearing away his gaze and looking around the room. It is just the two of you. Shiro reaches for your hand, and when he has it, closes his gloved fingers around yours.

“Keith?”

You relax back into the chair. For all the build-up to this moment, you never once thought about what you would say if you actually found him. After so many years, you hadn’t actually believed you would, and the sound that comes out when you open your mouth makes you close it again, swallowing the sob like like a pill that helps you go on when you think you no longer can.

But you can’t, and wrenching your hands away, you cover your face and cry the catharsis of so many years, not caring that he sees you, trying to convince yourself this is only an illusion because only in fairy tales or horror stories do the lost return from beyond.

Shiro kneels beside you, one hand on your back, gently, through the static artifacts of his outdated makeup. The pieces, once state of the art, nearly obsolete, show signs of rapid degradation, of saving and re-booting, saving over and over again until this vague outline with memory leaks is all that is left.

“Keith?” he tries again. “I don’t think I have much time.”

Composing yourself, you raise your eyes to his, urging him silently to go on.

“The last thing I remember was plunging the blazing sword of Voltron into the body of the Emperor. The Black Lion became filled with black power. I remember almost nothing else aside from glimpses of Haggar and a sense of being trapped inside as if I were being used to power something other than myself. I'm having a hard time explaining. It can't have been that long, but it feels like forever."

You shake your head, unable to tell him. "It's just like the Robeasts, you were inside your own… nightmare. I think.”

He considers this, backing off. Standing again, he scrutinizes the cockpit, this time lingering at the edges of the construct, the violet aura of the Lion drifts between you.

“We’re in the Plane,” he says, matter-of-fact.

The spell fractures like glass with the impact of his words and the shards scatter when they hit the plane defining the ground, deafening in their silent surrender.

“I am so, so sorry. This is not how I wanted us to be.” A small hitch catches in Shiro’s words. “This is not how I wanted _us_ to be.”

You shake your head. This can’t be how it ends

“Keith…” Shiro’s voice trails off, and he pulls you toward him, “Look at me, please?”

Shiro strips himself of the armor, his one bare hand gently tracing the contours of your face, the gesture as simple as making a memory. Soft fingertips drift over your eyelids and the dusty wings of your long dark lashes, wiping at the synthesized tears. He presses his thumb in the depression of the old burn beneath your eye. The soft pad runs down the slope of your cheek. Pulling you to his chest, he sighs.

“It wasn’t enough,” you cry again, “I wasn’t enough!”

“Shhh! No, Keith. There is nothing for me to do, no place for me to go. My body was destroyed when we fought Emperor Zarkon.”

“There’s always a way!”

“No,” Shiro replies, “there’s not.”

“I thought I could live without you.” Your body flickers with the fading effects of the quintessence injection.

“You have to go!” Pushing you back, Shiro struggles to stand, rebuilding a chimera of himself, all the parts building on top of his body. He taps into the communicator in his helmet, “Can anyone hear me? You’ve got to wake Keith up. Get him out of here! This place is about to collapse!”

The room begins to falter from the outside in, chained blocks sloughing off at the edges of the darkness, even as a white glow grows outward from where you stand.

“No!” You push yourself up, wrapping your arms tightly around Shiro even as your bodies crumble and fade. "I won't leave you again! You're- I love you!"

It is everything Shiro can do to push you away, hard and fast and into the collapsing center of the dying star.

He speaks without speaking, and you hear it even when he is gone.

_I love you, too._

 

 

### Epilogue

“Keith!”

Something jars his shoulder.

“C’mon. Wake up!”

Keith’s eyelids flutter, and the room comes slowly into focus. Pidge leans over him, one hand over the other in the center of his chest. Lance holds the headset between thumb and forefinger, cringing as steam from the band whispers up and dissipates in the air. Coughing, stinging tears form at the corners of Keith’s eyes, remembering where he is and where Shiro was.

Hunk takes him up in his strong arms. “We thought we'd lost you.”

“I’d rather be lost,” Keith thinks but refrains from saying, the hollow inside now a cavernous expanse, drained of any desire to force himself on. Closure brings with it renewed grief, and he wonders if he might have been better off not knowing. In the end, he still couldn't save the person who mattered most, the grim reminder of a fragile humanity and his place in the machinations of the cosmos.

Something pings softly, a sound recognized from a time long gone, a reality that no longer exists.

Pidge and Lance look at each other, then at Hunk.

It pings again.

Pushing himself to his knees, Keith musters the strength to crawl over to where Pidge arranged his things and dig through the paraphernalia stashed away until he finds it in a belt pouch. Guiltily, he pulls it out. A voice recognized by everyone comes clearly through the speaker unit of a broken off piece of a half-face helmet. All four stare at it.

“Somebody? Anybody? Pidge? Lance? Hunk?” there is a pause, “Keith, are you there? Can someone- I-I'm not sure what's going on. I think I'm in the Black Lion.”

Keith glances at his friends, then cautiously answers. “Shiro? W-we’re going to come get you, but the Lions are in Galra hands. Lay low and hang tight. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Pidge gives him a thumbs up and Hunk nods.

Lance stands, shouldering his pack. “What are we waiting for?”

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to get this out of my system before Season 7. That didn't happen, but oddly, I didn't retcon much of my draft. I still can't believe Sendak actually invaded Earth though! They really did that!


End file.
